Chapter 1. History, Methods, and Paradigms

Chapter 1. History, Methods, and Paradigms Saturday, January 22, 2011 6:29 PM Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how people acquire, store, transform, use, and communicate information. Cognitive processes include attention, perception, pattern recognition, and memory. { Attention: cognitive resources, mental effort, or concentration devoted to a cognitive process. { Perception: the interpretation of sensory information to yield a meaningful description or understanding. { Pattern recognition: the classification of a stimulus into a category. { Memory: the cognitive processes underlying the storage, retention, and retrieval of information. Recognition: the retrieval of information in which the processor must decide whether the information presented has been previously presented. Recall: the retrieval of information in which the processor must generate most of the information without aids. { Reasoning: cognitive processes used in transforming given information, called premises, into conclusions. Reasoning is often seen as a special kind of thinking. { Problem solving: the cognitive processes used in transforming starting information into a goal state, using specified means of solution. { Knowledge representation: the mental depiction, storage, and organization of information. { Language: a system of communication that is governed by a system of rules (grammar) and can express an infinite number of propositions. { Decision making: the processes by which an individual establishes the criteria and options for consideration. Empiricism: a philosophical doctrine emphasizing the role of experience in the acquisition of knowledge. { Recognize genetic factors but emphasize that human nature is malleable, changeable. { Association: a connection or link between two units or elements. John Locke argued that two distinct ideas or experiences can become linked together simply because they occurred at the same time. Nativism: a philosophical doctrine emphasizing the role of innate factors in the acquisition of knowledge. { Cognitive functions come built in, as part of our legacy as human beings. Structuralism: one of the earliest schools of cognitive psychology. It focused on the search for th